Taomeow

Note to self: never respond to newcomers' questions until you know more about them.

"Minds are what brains do." -- Marvin Minsky, father of neural networks This statement may seem overly materialistic and "non-spiritual," but the thing is, the very notions of "brain" and "mind" are rather arbitrary. They keep discovering "brains" in places other than the skull -- e.g. there's the "gut-brain" axis, with the enteric nervous system in continuous complex communication with the CNS via complex two-way signaling pathways (e.g. the vagus nerve that equally "belongs" to the gut and the head). The immune system has a mind of its own, and the mind in the head has only indirect and limited impact on what it thinks. It's hard to draw a demarcation line. Or rather, it's somewhat counterproductive. In the organ-system-function cognitive tradition of taoist sciences, you don't separate what they "are" from what they "do." It's all one, and it splits into "matter" and "spirit," "body" and "mind" that don't constitute a whole only when unhealthy. When it's healthy it's unified.

Youtube fed a CIA guy into my feed (yum!) who studied assorted psychology disciplines toward, well, manipulation, interrogation, infiltration and whatever else they want psychology for at the agency. So he said, based on what he asserts he learned from studies, that we have an average of 65,000 thoughts on a daily basis, of which 48,000 are negative and self-defeating, and not only that but 90 to 95% of them are repetitive, thoughts we already had before, many times before, and in all likelihood will have them again tomorrow. This I think (sic) is what cultivation systems that seem to advise fighting one's thoughts by various methods are up against, and I think (sic again) it may be a worthy albeit difficult pursuit. Not to eradicate "all" thoughts but to get rid of that useless overload that consumes a ton of brainpower. "When you eat a banana 60% of the calories go toward feeding your negativity." What a thought! I'm never eating bananas again! I know three ways of turning off that loop of thoughts going nowhere. Meditation, sleep, good audiobooks read by voices I like. All three have elements of wuwei in them, though in different proportions. (For me personally, audiobooks are more wuwei in my native tongue even though non-native poses no conscious difficulty -- but my unconscious is aware of an extra effort, and my consciousness is aware of that. I can literally feel my brain using more calories from that banana.) I think periodic non-thinking times are beneficial...

It is a belief system for the indoctrinated, but for the indoctrinators it is primarily (and often entirely) a power grab system. All our "life sciences" inherited the tradition they directly arose from -- that of witch hunts, getting rid of ideological competition, gaining both power and money, monopolizing control of people's bodies, calling the shots. (There's a pun in there.)

The hurricane/tropical storm is a couple hours away from us per latest predictions, but some fire hydrants in downtown decided to help it along ahead of schedule. Video: https://packaged-media.redd.it/k703vjwl1bjb1/pb/m2-res_1280p.mp4?m=DASHPlaylist.mpd&v=1&e=1692572400&s=6d053c7ae8deeab4e038fffffacb9f5afa090978#t=0

a prostitute who puts out for every client willing to pay. When margarine was invented, scores of 'nutrition scientists' were tasked with proving it's healthier than butter. For one example, around the 1980s all recipes collections and cookbooks got rewritten with margarine replacing butter in them. The French didn't buy it. But I do remember cooking with it in my younger years when I didn't know better. Live and learn. I believe nutrition as a science hardly exists. For starters it's too complex and mysterious -- the most magical transformation in existence, turning assorted not-you things into you, not-me into me... sheer magic. And to make matters worse, it pretends people didn't eat for a million years before sedentary agriculture, let alone before "nutritional science" -- and step very carefully around facts. Trying not to stumble and fall into, e.g., those fire pits that Native American tribes used for 25,000 to 40,000 years in one place (tribes coming and going, the fire pit being used continuously). They roasted their bison and buffalo whole in those. No wonder nutritional scientists of today give it the widest berth -- imagine falling into something like this and all your margarine and cereals stuffed in your learned pockets going up in smoke in an instant...

I think it's one of the least mysterious statements in the I Ching. A favorable beginning (yuan), penetrating progress (heng), beneficial appropriateness (li), and steadfast correctness (zhen) -- throughout the I Ching Yuanheng Lizhen stands for the "green light" in response to your divination. A "yes," rather than what the outcome of other inquiries may be -- "maybe," "possible but not likely," "don't go there," "a hard no."

You need to graciously love yourself off.

Yayoiu Kusama, 'Pumpkin Cat,' 1990 The cat addition to Kusama's famous pumpkin motif is of debatable authorship, but I like it. Kusama is a Japanese artist presently 96 years old. She keeps working every day in her Tokyo studio. Happy Halloween!

Budai, yes, aka "the fat Buddha" or "the laughing Buddha." A Chan monk named Qici, later deified as the Future Buddha -- Maitreya. Indeed, it was Lord Gautama the original Buddha who ODed on pork, but I wanted a picture of a fat buddha specifically to illustrate the point about overindulgence in food, not a passport photo ID of Lord Gautama. Contrary to a popular misconception, Gautama is not the only Buddha and the names "Gautama" and "Buddha" are not interchangeable. As a zen saying goes, "you walk knee deep in Buddhas."

Lamb is OK, just don't eat pork on a hot day. That's how the Buddha entered nirvana. Or, in layman's terms, died. Ate too much of an irresistible pork dish, Sukaramaddava, on a hot day. That's the Mahayana tradition, by the way, whereas in Theravada they try to shy away from the fact by asserting it was a dish of special "trampled by pigs" mushrooms. But the hot weather was the likely contributor in either case, since the Buddha, before entering nirvana, told his host, the blacksmith who served him that dish, to bury what's left of it, just in case. Which hints at the possibility it was spoiled and he didn't want anyone else to get food poisoning. Though it's more likely he was trying to play down his overeating habit... which, coupled with hot weather, may be more perilous than it is in cold climates where one needs to burn extra calories to stay warm.

I am not aware of diagnostics becoming less rather than more invasive... depends on what you're comparing them to and what you know about the ones perceived as non-invasive that are in reality anything but. E.g., ultrasound in pregnancy is mighty controversial (and if you haven't heard about it, there's a reason for that... we hear what the establishment wants us to hear, everything else gets swept under the rug... it's just that some of us have stumbled over that rug and developed a habit of lifting it to see what lies beneath before venturing a step.) A fetus is extremely sensitive. Some of the concerns are neurological effects (exposure could affect fetal brain development or neuronal migration, based on animal studies), thermal effects (risk of local tissue heating, particularly near bone), cavitation effects (microscopic gas bubbles forming and collapsing in tissues, damaging molecules and cells), intrauterine growth restriction (observational studies noted a statistical correlation), and subtle long-term effects (concerns regarding increased risks for conditions like autism, childhood cancers, speech delays, etc.). It's just one example, but there are many "non-invasive" diagnostic procedures that are only non-invasive because the invasion is not immediately obvious. As for insulin -- that was discovered over a hundred years ago... Diabetes, in most cases, could be prevented or cured with better lifestyle and (especially) dietary choices. But the money isn't in that. Hence the current approach -- to pretty much everything.

He's done a lot of Egyptian study yet never talks of Bastet, buddy. What kind of cool white cat is that?

The thread this one got split from was about LIFE sciences. And of course went as those topics always do: 1) When someone talks about the problems with LIFE sciences, the self-appointed defenders of science bring up TECHNOLOGY as proof of progress of SCIENCE. Technology, indeed, is booming and blooming, but this does not inform one of the state of affairs with life sciences. You want to know the state of affairs with their progress that made any positive difference in the lives of live humans? The last time life sciences made progress was in the 19th century when they stopped bashing the concept of hygiene and ridiculing and ostracizing surgeons who wanted to wash their hands before performing surgeries. And no longer put them in lunatic asylums for this crazy idea that infant and new mothers' mortality may have something to do with the fact that they dissect corpses for scientific purposes and then move on to delivering babies without washing their hands. 2) There's countless irresponsible endeavors in current LIFE sciences which the people currently called scientists do JUST BECAUSE THEY CAN, and most of them are extremely destructive to the health and well-being of actual live human beings and all creatures great and small. The bulk of tangible progress is in weaponized applications. Purportedly against the potential enemy. In reality, innocent bystanders who are affected are pretty much everybody on the planet. 3) This extinction-level status quo is entrenched so firmly and the indoctrination runs so deep, and is so all-encompassing, that talking not only with its perpetrators but also with its victims is usually an exercise in futility.

Or a penguin... same deal. Although penguins compensate by flying underwater. And an emu can outrun any number of competitive cyclists, to say nothing of ants.

Your experience does not contradict my statement. The thing is, there's no such generic thing as "scientists." I also have a master's (so what) and am a descendant of four generations of Ph.D.s, two of which achieved truly great things in (of all things) agricultural sciences whose positive impact lasts till today. (No, not pesticides or genetic modifications, nothing of the sort. Real agricultural science as it used to exist before all that jazz.) You may want to re-read what I wrote with this idea in mind: "scientists" and "science" is a profoundly ephemeral concept. Smoke and mirrors that may hide anyone and anything. That's the generic everyday use (or rather glaringly wrongful misuse) of the term "science," which (as @zerostao pointed out in the statement I was expounding on) is absolutely equal to a belief system. We are trained to believe statements we are told originate from "Science." "Trust the Science" absolutely equals "In God We Trust" -- it's a statement of belief plus a commandment. Real science has nothing to do with statements of belief and commandments. And real scientists... the system is set up to produce very few of those -- and disown, discredit, persecute them if they fail to toe the indoctrinators' line. But enough tangent.

This sounds like something from Zhuangzi. With this statement you have achieved greatness. Maybe not eternal -- but you did produced a great moment for me.

It was, which is why I didn't watch it. (The reason I pressed the "like" button is, I sometimes do that in acknowledgement of someone's contribution to keeping alive a thread which I don't want to fall by the wayside.) Why did you watch it?

Sorry to hear about your loss. My condolences.

In an alternative scenario, the nurse giving you the shot probably hit a blood vessel. Occasionally it happens, and that's what might cause bleeding (of varying intensity which depends on the size of the blood vessel hit). If you had no other symptoms while taking turmeric (e.g. abnormal bruising from things that shouldn't cause it, or spontaneous appearance of bruises out of nowhere, or any minor wounds that caused disproportionate bleeding, etc.) I don't think it's very likely that turmeric was involved. It is indeed a very mild blood thinner, key words very mild, and its mechanism of action is different from that of both aspirin and prescription blood thinners. It does not interfere with normal clotting in the real world, only in theory. There's cuisines (e.g. in many parts of India) where it is used in everyday dishes in amounts far exceeding what is usually taken as a supplement in the West. Of course if it's a before surgery situation it's prudent to take nothing at all, just to be on the safe side (except for Yunnan Baiyao of course -- and I wouldn't tell the allopaths about that one unless they were also knowledgeable in classical Chinese medicine, which would be too much to ask). Disclaimer: I ain't no doctor.

Roger Waters

I like learning new words on occasion, not ordinary words but stranger words. I wrote about anemoia on the previous page, and today I accidentally came across the lyrics of Bad Boys (it used to be the opening song of a TV show popular in the '90s) and learned idren. It's a Rastafarian term made out of "I" and "brethren" (or "sistren" -- it's gender neutral) that means "me and my spiritual brothers and sisters," "me and all my people." Interestingly, it sounds like one of those Chinese words where "ren" -- meaning "person" -- at the end forms a term of belonging to a group (e.g. Meiguoren -- American, Zhongguoren -- Chinese, and so on.. ) The daobumren are strange.

It comes from wuji (tao-in-stillness) transforming into taiji (tao-in-motion) also going by Xiantian and Houtian. Yang floats upward, yin sinks downward. That's the beginning of heaven and earth. "In the heaven images arise, on earth they take shape," as the Ta Chuan explains it. (Unlike in all hierarchical systems, it's not "heaven first, earth later," it's a mutually dependent and simultaneous process.) And then every step of the way the pattern gets refined/complicated -- up to 64 steps times five times eight and their ten thousand combinations... and that's the outer border of a meaningful pattern. Beyond it lies Hundun, where there's no pattern. Chaos. Plenty of information, no meaning.

I would say information is part of what qi is/does, but my understanding is that "pattern" runs deeper. When someone yells "fire!" in a theater -- that's information. But if there's no pattern consistent with that information (heat, flames, smoke, etc.) it may mean we have a prankster on our hands, or misinformation, or a mistake, or malicious intent, and so on. In other words, information is open to interpretation, while pattern is independent of interpretation. It just is what it is and does what it does. A practitioner of taoist arts and sciences observes the pattern and discerns its meaning -- and then interprets the resulting information. That's one reason we're not as hung up on names as some other practitioners are. My teacher, e.g., used to call the taiji move known as "White Crane Opens Wings" simply "Big Bird" -- but because the students were able to observe the pattern of that move, they didn't interpret it as an invitation to imitate the muppet character known as Big Bird. Likewise, I didn't know anything about the MCO when I had to buzz off my hair (normally long) because I had a distinct feeling that "that thing" running up my spine gets tangled in my hair and tickles most annoyingly. (I still have an old expired driver's license with a picture of me with that uncharacterisic hairstyle. Every time I see it, I'm, like, "what was I thinking?" -- and then I remember. And now I have the words for that... "oh... that's what it was, "'it'" was trying to go through the yuzhen 玉枕, and since that gate is perhaps the biggest obstacle in the orbit to overcome, '"it'" was sort of chipping away at the passage... and hair being in the way was, of course, a subjective interpretation of the sensations.)